WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 683 Saturday 27 March 2010 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448 http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------- A formatted version of this e-magazine is available online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/ydja.htm My personal page on Facebook: http://wwwords.org?FBMQ A Facebook discussion group (http://wwwords.org?FBDG) Also now on Twitter: http://wwwords.org?TWTR. To leave the list or change your subscribed address, see Section A below or go to http://wwwords.org?SUBS. Please don't e-mail me with subscription matters unless you are having problems. This e-magazine is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font. For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Feedback, notes and comments. 2. Turns of Phrase: 3D fatigue. 3. Weird Words: Guddling. 4. What I've Learned This Week. 5. Q and A: Wild West. 6. Sic! A. Subscription information. B. E-mail contact addresses. C. Ways to support World Wide Words. 1. Feedback, notes and comments ------------------------------------------------------------------- HYETAL After my item about this word last time, several readers, well versed in classical Greek mythology, mentioned the Hyades, a star group named after the five daughters of Atlas, who were half- sisters to the Pleiades. After the death of their brother, the weeping sisters were changed into a cluster of stars which became associated with rain because their heliacal rising coincided with the spring rains. Unromantically, Oxford dictionaries argue that "Hyades" might instead derive from "hus", a pig, since the Latin name of the group is Suculae, "little pigs". FIPPLE Having written last week about the fipple, an essential component of instruments such as whistles and recorders, Mike Nease pointed me to CHIFF. This turns up in several places online in partnership with "fipple". Oxford Music online explains that it's the little noise that occurs at the beginning of notes played on various wind instruments, caused by a transient distortion that's sometimes called articulation. The term is most often used in reference to pipe organs. Where the word comes from is unrecorded, though it may be significant that a small British bird is called the chiff-chaff, from an imitation of its call. 2. Turns of Phrase: 3D fatigue ------------------------------------------------------------------- Films in 3D are the latest wheeze to get bums on seats in cinemas and 3D-TV is now technically available if you can afford the set and can find something to watch on it. However, a problem has surfaced: eyestrain. Some filmgoers say that viewing movies using special glasses is causing them eye problems, headaches and nausea. The issue is common to any medium that attempts to create the illusion of depth using stereoscopic images, which require users to distinguish the images in a way that isn't natural to the brain. Similar symptoms, Slate magazine points out, plague flight simulators, head-mounted virtual-reality displays, and many other applications of 3-D technology. The technical term is asthenopia. The term "3D fatigue" (also "3-D fatigue") is new: it started to be used in blogs and reviews in the autumn of 2009, after the 3D films Coraline and Up were released but before Avatar. The trouble is far from new, however, since it was one reason why the last try at producing 3D films, back in the 1950s, failed to catch on. Following the recent spate of 3D films, with many more to come, some moviegoers have borrowed "3D fatigue" to refer to boredom with the technique, which they argue adds technical spectacle without enhancing storylines. It appears entertainment can be bad for our health. A UC Berkeley vision scientist is calling attention to what he calls "3D fatigue." His research shows [that] if 3D movies or television is done badly, it strains the viewer's eyes. [ABC News, 24 Feb. 2010.] Viewers are also likely to be concerned about health problems, particularly the so-called "3D fatigue" caused by viewers' eyes becoming tired. Manufacturers claim new technology has eliminated such problems. [Daily Mail, 11 Mar. 2010.] 3. Weird Words: Guddling /'gVd(@)lIN/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- Guddlers live in difficult times, since the activity that goes by the name of guddling is illegal in many places, including the UK and most US states. It's a method of fishing that requires only the bare hands, hence rather too convenient for poachers who find rods and tackle both cumbersome and revealing. It's also called tickling and is linked in particular with fishing for trout. In parts of North America its practitioners call it noodling, though they usually reserve it for hunting catfish, a beast so well equipped to fight back that to do so is to engage in an extreme sport. Trout guddling requires patience and skill: There had been a swift and noiseless rush underneath the stone; a few grains of sand rose up where the white under part of the trout had touched it as it glided beneath. Slowly and imperceptibly Winsome's hand worked its way beneath the stone. With the fingers of one hand she made that slight swirl of the water which is supposed by expert "guddlers" to fascinate the trout, and to render them incapable of resisting the beckoning fingers. [The Lilac Sunbonnet, by S R Crockett, 1894.] The verb "guddle" has been most associated with Scotland, and may be derived from Gaelic, though its antecedents are obscure. 4. What I've Learned This Week ------------------------------------------------------------------- MATHEMATICAL CROCHETERS TRIUMPH In the issue of 27 February (see http://wwwords.org?I679N4), you may have read about the shortlisted entrants for the Diagram prize run by The Bookseller, which rewards the oddest book title of the year. Following an online poll, the 2009 winner was announced yesterday (Friday): Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Dr Daina Taimina. The prize's organiser, Harold Bent, commented that, even in these credit-crunched times, oddly-titled books are proving highly recession-resistant. "This book is a worthy champion to stand alongside the likes of Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers and Living with Crazy Buttocks as winners." Philip Stone of The Bookseller said, "What won it for Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is that, very simply, the title is completely bonkers. One hopes that Dr Taimina's win prompts other enlightened crocheters, knitters and embroiderers to produce similar works, so I look forward to seeing books such as Cross-stitching String Theory and Felting Feats with Phenomenology adorning bookshop shelves in the near future." MEN WHO EAT VEG Slate Magazine called it "a ridiculous new term". The comment was provoked by a piece in the Boston Globe on 24 March about American men who have decided to eschew the traditional diet of pizzas, burgers and fried food and go vegan. The Globe article says they are "the new face of veganism: men in their 40s and 50s embracing a restrictive lifestyle to look better, rectify a gluttonous past, or cheat death." Newser.com comments, "They don't match the cultural mainstream of veganism - they're disinclined to proselytize, and espouse little of vegetarianism's new-age vibe or veganism's crust-punk ethos." The term the Boston Globe created? HEGAN. The piece implies that it's a blend of "he" plus "vegan". 5. Q and A: Wild West ------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. On a recent episode of a BBC panel quiz programme (apologies for my not being able to remember which one) we learned that the term "Wild West" was coined, not by Frederic Remington, not by Zane Grey, but by Charlotte Brontė. Can this possibly be right? [Robert Englund] A. This sounds very much like the smart-aleck QI, hosted by Stephen Fry. The initials stand for "Quite Interesting", a mild misnomer. In one sense, the answer is correct, since at the moment the first citation for "Wild West" in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1849 and is from Charlotte Brontė's novel Shirley: "What suggested the wild West to your mind?" In another sense, it's utterly inaccurate. That's because the entry for "Wild West" appeared in the "Whisky- Wilfulness" fascicle of the OED published in November 1924. At that time, access to early American sources was nowhere near as good as it is now and, of course, digital databases hadn't been thought of. When the entry is revised, not too far in the future, I'm certain that it will take the term back at least a couple of decades. My own research finds this, for example: He was the first white man in Old Kentucky, and the wide wild west is full of his licks. [The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review, 19 Jul. 1823. The article is an extract from Memorable days in America by William Faux and this comment is about Daniel Boone.] By the 1830s, "Wild West" had become moderately well known in the US and was becoming so in the UK. For Charlotte Brontė to employ it in 1849 is unsurprising - the term by then was well established on both sides of the Atlantic. 6. Sic! ------------------------------------------------------------------- "My local supermarket," e-mailed Eric Marsh from Queensland, "was recently selling 'profita rolls'. Well, they were round and they presumably don't sell at a loss." Sometimes a writer's professional vocabulary can appear where it's inappropriate. Teresa Goodell found this in some meeting minutes at the school of nursing where she works: "Students will communicate relevant committee actions to other students and act as lesions between the faculty and student body." Robert Nathan e-mailed, "These fatal slayings are the very worst kind." He had seen a sad story in the Daily News Wire Services over a headline which appeared in numerous American newspapers: "Police search for gunman in fatal South Park slaying". "Don't let your children get anywhere near these Romeo champions," Ken Afton warns us. He was responding to another headline, this time in the Romeo Observer of Michigan: "Romeo champions cause of childhood cancer in big way." I was browsing the developer pages for the Mozilla Firefox browser the other day and encountered a heading in a list of new features: "Web workers can now self-terminate." Thankfully, it was referring to software agents, not human ones. A. Subscription information ------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe, please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm . You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a list of commands, send this message to listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org: INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS This e-magazine is also available as an RSS feed, whose source is at http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml . Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ . B. E-mail contact addresses ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Comments on e-magazine mailings are always welcome. They should be sent to me at wordseditor@worldwidewords.org . I do try to respond, but pressures of time often prevent me from doing so. * Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers@worldwidewords.org . 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